Saturday, April 25, 2015

3R power bank by Recycling Reusing and Repurposing

Always wanted a 5v 1A mobile power bank to supply projects or to charge mobile devices?

In this post, let's recycle li-ion batteries (18650 cells) from an old Laptop's battery pack into mobile power banks.

WARNING: take extra precautions not to short the VCC and GND of the circuity that wired up the 18650 cells in the laptop battery back. One the casing of the battery pack, there are warnings and cautions.

Yours truly is a hoarder. having break down the E8410 into tasty bits, nothing was wasted, including the battery packs. The battery pack's plastic cover will be pry open carefully to reveal the goodies: 18650 li-ion cells.

please note the each of the 18650 li-ion cells is 3.7v; detail writeup of li-ion battery cells to follow soon.

the objective is to harvest the 18650 li-ion cells from old laptop battery pack. The harvested cells than can be used as the reservoir with li-ion charging circuit that thats input from a renewable energy source such as solar, wind mill, hydro, or even a hamster wheel, and 5v dc booster circuit will provide constant 5V 1A output to power device such as arduino units or even mobile devices.

note: TP4056 and BL8531 circuits are bought from middle kingdom at 68cents and 80ctns respectively.

methodology
1. carefully remove the plastic cover of the battery pack. take extra precautions not to puncture or damage the 18650 cells.

2. make sure the work area is free of conductors, eg small metal screws, paper clips etc. carefully remove the 18650 cells from the plastic enclosure

3. At the point of writing, there is a plan for the 18650 cells (in red) above. hence, it is not thoroughly broken down into individual pieces. A detailed step by step guide to break it down will follow in future post.A regular 18650 cell (in blue) bought from stores will be used as a demo in the following steps.

4. Solder multicore wires preferably AWG10 as leads.
the PCB on the left is TP4056, PCB on the right is BL8531.
A terminal block is used to allow for connection from a variety of clean energy sources eg solar cells, wind mills, hydro, or even human powered hamster wheel. the red and black wires exposed are meant to be connected to the li-ion battery made up of 18650 cells. the regular USB port is the output port.

5. testing of the charging of 18650 li-ion battery cell from a usb source

6. testing of powering up and arduino using the 18650 li-ion cell as supply. note the usb port to charge the li-ion battery is disconnected.

7. testing of charging the 18650 li-ion cell with solar panel rated at 6V and max output of 6.5W. Solar panel courtesy of Mr.Nalpon's stash at T1016 (before he retired).

So, what can you do with it? have an idea on what to make with this setup? ping yours truly.